


If You Love Them

by TheClassyCorvid



Series: The London Garden [2]
Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, New Family, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27686858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheClassyCorvid/pseuds/TheClassyCorvid
Summary: Margaret watches her brother love the unreachable.
Series: The London Garden [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029999
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	If You Love Them

He's been with them for two weeks. These two weeks have limped along on cinderblock legs more in the fashion of two decades. Even the expeditions that drag Robert away to the cold churning oceans for months seem shorter. 

Victor is still unwell. Sometimes, when Margaret struggles with scrubbing linens that multiply under her nose and bounces between cleaning pots only to realize that it’s time to prepare supper, she wonders if she hasn’t been saddled with the responsibility of caring for a fourth child. He’s not much younger than she, but he looks as though he is. Maybe that’s why she relents and brings his soup and runs his baths.

He can’t help it, of course. She reminds herself often to keep her tongue sealed behind her teeth. Nobody can help being sick. He almost starved in an Arctic wasteland, crumpled on a fragile floe and shuddering in an ice-stiffened coat. He could’ve died. Maybe it would’ve been better that way.

The thought jostles her, unwelcome as a salesman. Her face burns. It was only a thought—the same brand of worrisome notion as squeezing a helpless kitten. She doesn’t _mean_ it. 

She shoves the thought away.

Balancing a platter against her hip, Margaret wedges one foot in the door to push it open. The spoon handle in the soup bowl skids around the rim, scraping ceramic.

Victor watches her as she bustles in. He looks with vague interest at the platter through his lowered eyelashes.

“Hungry?” Margaret says, light and airy. It comes out fake as customer service with the same squeak of wet newspaper on glass.

“A bit.”

“I’ve got potato soup and fresh bread for you, dear.”

“Thank you.”

“Care for honey in your tea?”

“Please.”

“All right.”

Staccato. Each exchange is like whacking a shuttlecock across a net. Smack. Smack. Each clipped sentence lands with a thud. Part of Margaret wants to wring his neck. She thrusts that impulse away too.

She clacks the platter onto the nightstand. Tea sloshes. It’s glimmering amber in the waning sunlight. 

She dips a honey-laden spoon into the cup and stirs. China chimes softly with each click of the spoon. The reflection of the window in the tea snips up and scatters into gold confetti.

Victor still watches her surreptitiously. He does that often. He keeps his nose pointed to the wall, never inclining his head toward her, but he sneaks catty-cornered glances at her from beneath his lashes. He could be mistaken as dozing if it weren’t for the occasional ticking of his eyelids.

It makes her bristle. It shouldn’t. Maybe he’s like Robert and balks at meeting gazes. That’s not his fault. But something burrows deeper into her chest and she just knows he’s snubbing her. That polite, mousy little voice can’t excuse the haughty mannerisms.

Margaret braces herself, pressing her heels into the floor. She offers the teacup. Victor regards it in silence for a moment before accepting. His fingers brush hers, startlingly ice-cold and soft.

A pained wince tightens up his face. A shadow passes. He catches himself. His eyes flutter shut and he draws a long, thin breath through his nose.

“Thank you,” he says again. It’s smaller this time.

That strange dignity wraps him up again like a corset, tugging up his posture and straightening his shoulders until he’s prim as a porcelain doll. He smooths his thumb along the side of the teacup, examining the delicate blue cornflowers painted on the china. 

Even tangled up in two blankets and wearing a big baggy nightgown with the lace ruffles all puffed up like carnations, he carries himself like nobility. Somehow, in a tiny bedroom tucked in the back of a London cottage, he’s under the whole world’s scrutiny.

He seems so contrived. He’s made of plastic and frost and sugar-glass. Nobody can be that poised, that burdened, yet that soft and young. He should be a man twice older and thrice larger. Then, maybe, the gravitas would fit in him nicely and not overflow with so many sharp edges and make him seem so ridiculously melodramatic.

He’s too much for himself, she suspects. 

She’s staring. She catches herself and sniffs. Cobwebs and puffs of purple dust blow from her brain in a musty whirlwind, leaving her oddly calm.

She slides her hands down the sides of her apron with a sigh. When her lungs empty, she’s ten pounds lighter. Warmth blooms in her chest.

“Eat all that you can, my dear. Robert and I would love to see you strong enough to walk in the garden soon.”

Victor keeps tracing the flowers on the teacup. “I’m grateful for your generosity, Mrs. Saville.”

It’s subdued. Just a murmur, barely coherent. Dismissive.

Margaret swallows. Embarrassment presses like cotton stuffing deep in her ears, full and fluffy.

“It would make him happy,” she says. The sentiment unravels like a skein of yarn, and she fumbles with it desperately. 

“There’s a wrought-iron bench in the orchard, you know. You could sit together outside and—talk. My husband and I always enjoy spending time there when the children have been rowdy all day.”

“What do you picture us talking about?”

The question hits like a slap. Margaret eases one foot back, toe to the floor. The cherry boards creak under her. Victor hazards a tentative sip of tea, but keeps the cup tilted to his face for a long time.

Margaret grapples for the words. They roll and tumble away from her like apples from an overturned barrel, and she isn’t sure which one to grab first. 

“Well—I supposed you might appreciate time alone. It’s difficult for couples to relax in each other’s company in a home that’s about to split at the seams with children swinging from the chandeliers and dishes banging and people calling across rooms. I know it’s rare to find a moment’s peace, but . . . “

Her voice hangs on the last word and trails. Silence weighs heavy as a layered duvet. Leaves crackle and fizz against the window, sending shadows wavering like water over the fleur-de-lis wallpaper. 

“You make assumptions, Mrs. Saville,” Victor says into his cup. Sunlight glares off the gilded rim in a blinding white star. He doesn’t seem to notice.

Margaret’s hands go lead-heavy. She folds her arms across her chest and locks them tight. Her heart throbs against the heel of her hand. She turns her head to the window.

“He cares for you,” she says at last. It falls like a brick.

“I wish better for him than this.”

Better than this. Than Victor? Margaret agrees. Her brother deserves so much more.

“You never wanted to be here, did you?”

Victor’s shoulders sink beneath the billowy nightdress. He wilts like a forgotten flower. Margaret isn’t sure if the heat surging through her nerves is urging her to shake him or hold him. She digs her nails into her elbows and presses her arms deeper against her ribs until they ache.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Victor goes on. His voice is hollow in the cup, a dying echo. “The damned aren’t ever ushered into heaven. Exceptions can’t be made for me. I’ve tried once before to take what isn’t mine and bend laws that won’t break. I can’t do it again.”

Margaret’s stomach twists up into a Gordian knot as if she’s packed away a plate of week-old sausage. She could snatch those scrawny shoulders and rattle sense into his head—she can try. But all she can manage is dropping like a bag of potatoes to the corner of the mattress and clutching at his arms. Tea slops from the cup when she grabs him and platters over the quilt in big dark splotches. 

“You aren’t taking anything,” she says. She squeezes him the same way she’d hold onto one of her misbehaving children to tenderly reprimand them. “We’re offering. We wouldn’t offer if we didn’t wish you’d accept.”

He stares up at her through his forelock. His eyes pinch into wet squints. Margaret can’t look away.

“I can’t.”

Margaret jostles him a little to bring him to reality like a hefty dose of sal volatile. 

“Why did you come home with him then?”

“I didn’t want to hurt him.” Victor speaks calmly, quiet and cool as ever, but his hand trembles around the cup. Each shiver makes the china ding against the saucer and reverberate. He tightens his fingers.

“He was kind to me,” he says. “He stayed in that dark stuffy cabin below deck for days just to ensure I slept safely. He listened to me and passed no judgment. He said he loved me—”

His voice goes goopy and breaks like egg yolk under fork tines. His face darkens. Margaret’s grip loosens.

“He reminds me so terribly of someone I knew. Someone dear, who nursed and loved me, and I loved him in return. Hurting your brother feels the same as hurting him. Walton was my second chance. I couldn’t.” 

Margaret’s heart clenches with a quiver of pain. 

“Was that not in the past?” she says. She swallows and rubs her thumbs over his shoulders. 

“It’s not your place to forgive my wrongs against others.”

Her hands slide down his arms, rumpling his sleeves.

What can she say? ‘They’re all dead, Victor. Whose forgiveness are you waiting for?’

But she can’t ask. She already knows, and she assumes he knows as well.

She releases him. The mattress creaks and pops back into shape when she rises. Her palms tingle from skimming his shirt. The sleeve seam is carved into her hand as a jagged red imprint.

“I love you, dear,” she says. It’s on impulse; instinct. She wishes she hadn’t said it. She turns to the tray, keeping her back to him, and fusses over the silverware. The tin lid clangs against the sugar bowl. The delicate chime ripples to the rafter.

Victor sniffles.

“If you want anything, let me know. I’ll leave you to your soup now.”

She scoops up a handful of her trailing skirts and pulls the door shut behind her.

When she steps into the brightness of the lavender parlor, Robert lowers his book. His smile flashes, dazzling as summer sunshine on a sparkling meadow stream. He dog-ears the corner of the page and puts the book aside.

“How is he?”

“Resting. I’ve just brought his supper. Robert—”

He halts, halfway off the lounge chair when she implores.

“Don’t. Let him eat, dear. You can visit later.”

As if she hasn’t spoken, Robert brushes by. Margaret grabs for his elbow to haul him back. 

“Come with me,” she blurts. “Let’s—let’s bundle up the children and shuffle them outside to play. It’s a nice day for it, don’t you think? They miss your attention.”

Her desperation melts like candlewax. She softens.

“Uncle Robert is right at home, yet he seems more distant than he ever was thousands of miles away at sea.”

Robert falters. He glances at the hall then back. His eyes narrow. 

“I’m sorry, Meg. I never intend to neglect you or the children. I only want to see him for a bit.”

“I know. But, dear . . . perhaps fostering such a dependency on him is ill-advised.”

He sucks in a breath in a sharp whoosh. His head tilts enough for him to peer at her over his shoulder.

“And you mean . . . ?”

Margaret almost smothers. She looks down, through the intricate floral pattern of his waistcoat. The stitched vines and rose blossoms blur.

“You invest so much in him,” she says at last. “To the exclusion of your family. You’ve had more meals in a chair pulled up to his bedside than you’ve had with us at the table. It seems your home is ever-shrinking, and it’s now the size of Victor’s bedroom.”

“He’s as much a part of the family as you.”

He doesn’t mean it that way. But it still stings. Her eyes itch and her head clogs up as if she’s been dicing a bushel of onions.

“Robert,” she tries again. “What if he doesn’t feel the same?”

His smile stays steady. It’s radiant and beautiful.

“I already know that."

Margaret claws his sleeve into her fist. Her nails jab in. A raggedy inhale cuts her throat. Her voice goes thin as a silk thread.

“You know? You already know he doesn't . . . then—why—Robert, how can you still cling to him so intently?”

Robert’s smile deepens. All at once, he looks ten years younger. Margaret’s throat is full of burrs and cactus bristles and sand.

“Is it really strange to love what won’t love in return? We love things like sunsets and cherry orchards and hymns, don't we? We enjoy basking in something beautiful and thinking that, somehow, among everyone on earth, it was made just for us.”

He takes her hand and sandwiches it between his own, pressing it fondly. His hands are big and rough and warm.

“Seeing him feels like stepping onto land in fresh air after months at sea. Every day I strive to bring back his sense of worth and hope. And when I succeed, if he leaves me for another, I’ll be content, because I helped restore some of the happiness in life that he deserves. And I’ll always enjoy memories of holding him in my arms, and soothing him through his fevered spells, and dreaming that he were mine.”

“Oh, Robert.” It hinges on a breath, simultaneously disapproving and pitying. She doesn’t know what else to say. 

She steps closer, shoes scuffing the floor, and loops her arms around his neck. She presses her face into his shoulder, clutching him. He’s firm and warm and familiar. His hair still smells faintly of seaspray; maybe it always will.

He lets her squeeze him for a long time. She doesn’t want to let go. Every time she does, it’s harder to draw him back.


End file.
